patiently for expression a few years later. It is difficult, indeed, as I write these notes, to realize that the individual who describes the incidents is the individual who experienced them. The body itself has changed every single physical particle at least four times in succession. Nor is the mind the same. With the exception of one or two main interests, easily handed on by the outgoing atoms to the incoming atoms in the brain, "I" possess little that the "I" of those distant New York days possessed. Even the continuity of memory is bequeathable by atoms leaving the brain to the new ones just arriving. Where, then, is the self who experienced years ago what the self holding this pen now sets down?
The "I," during the next few years, at any rate, went rolling; rolling from one experience to another, if not cheerily, at least resignedly. Whatever happened--and what happened was mostly unpleasant--there was never absent the conviction that it was deserved, and must be lived out in a spirit of acceptance, until finally exhausted. Any other attitude toward unwelcome events meant evasion, and a disagreeable experience shirked merely postponed it to another time, either in this life or another. There was, meanwhile, a real self that remained aloof, untouched, neither happy nor unhappy, a spectator, but a royal spectator. Into this eternal Self was gathered the fruit and essence of each and every experience the lower "I" passed through; the secret of living was to identify oneself with this exalted and untroubled royalty....
The rolling-stone went rolling, therefore, somewhat in this spirit, which helped and comforted, which made most things possible, bearable at any rate, because it was the outcome of that strange inner conviction established in my blood, a conviction, as mentioned, neither argument nor evidence could alter.
Letters from home, home memories as well, pertained now to some distant, unrecoverable region that was dead and gone. My mother's letters--one every week without
a single omission--expressed a larger spirit. Her faithful
